Wanted: The Enterprise Data Center Of The Future

December 2, 2013 Dan Burger

There are periodic leaps of progress in the IT business and some don’t even require leaps of faith. It has been 25 years since IBM introduced the AS/400 midrange computer and there are many companies now running the AS/400 successor, IBM i, that have refused, with good reason, to leap into the X86 alternate universe.

How will the data center landscape change in the coming years? The IT analysts at Gartner pay little, if any, attention to the IBM i user base, but they are predicting great leaps of progress in data center architectures. Advice for planning data center strategies comes along with this prophecy.

“Over the next five to 10 years, most organizations will need to change their approach to previous data center strategies used in the last five to seven years, as most of the world comes out of recession and the Nexus of Forces (social, mobile, cloud, and information) affects technology use,” said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner. “Historically, data centers have been viewed solely as service delivery centers in which cost and risk must be balanced. Agility, a critical third variable, will become increasingly important in future.”

Data center strategists have a shopping list of technologies that will be key components in the evolution of data centers. Here’s the focus list according to Gartner analysts:

Start Deploying Processor, Memory and Power Efficient Technologies
Move toward a Balanced Architectural Topology and Delivery Model
Invest in Operational Processes and Improved Tools
Integrate Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity into Your Core Data Center Strategy
Manage Capacity Growth through Data Analysis
Plan for Operating System and Application Changes
Make Consolidation and Rationalization a Continuous Change Program
Modernize Data Center Facilities

“These eight critical forces are the major factors to consider when developing a data center strategy,” said Kumar. “Individually and taken together, they will determine the appropriate level of risk, cost and agility that data centers will carry and provide for the business. This model should be the starting point for mid- and long-term data center strategy discussions.”

It seems that IBM i shops, those that are actually running IBM i and not i5/OS or OS/400, are likely to be at least half way to the goal of a modern data center, as described by the Gartner analysts. And it would do my heart good to hear from shops that are well into this five- to 10-year plan. This would make a good follow-up article, and I need at least a few people willing to comment. Email me via our Contacts page if you care to weigh in.

The full report, titled Eight Critical Forces That Will Shape Enterprise Data Center Strategies for the Next Five Years, is available on Gartner’s website.